DailyKaizen

Yesterday I spoke with a new Lean mentor of mine about how to support leaders that are feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of change.  The team I am working with has made great strides, but is now struggling with how to maintain production levels while completely transforming the production line.  In other words, we are trying to change the tire on the bus as it rolling down the highway.   He has a vast amount of experience in leading large transformations in a manufacturing setting and has graciously agreed to coach me twice per month on my consulting challenges.   His advice was both helpful and practical.  Here are the main points he made:

• Help the managers see value from the Value Stream prospective.  If you are able to get them to transition from a functional view of the world they will start to identify all kinds of work that no longer needs to be done.  Thus freeing up capacity to fund improvement efforts.
• Start small, but keep going.  Pick a couple of easy projects that will free up resources and execute on them and then reinvest the freed up resources into other, larger improvement projects.
• Finally, coach each of them individually, in the background.  Spend the time helping them get comfortable with the tools and the principles so that they feel confident in front of their peers and their staff.

I thought it was good advice and I wonder if others have additions?